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The Party of "No"

Technorati and Me

Technorati is indexing me again! They had to make a code change to fix
the problem with my blog getting stuck in their queue. Kudos to Eric M.
and the guys at
GetSatisfaction.com
where they have "community powered support for Technorati".

Well, they're "sorta, kinda" indexing me anyway. It's on a 24 hour tape
delay or something. So I never get picked up by Memeorandum because they
pull from Technorati and Technorati has stuff I posted yesterday
listed as my latest blog entry. And that's old news to Memeorandum.

Wankers.

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The kilogram may need to go on a diet. The international standard, a
cylinder-shaped hunk of metal that defines the fundamental unit of mass,
has gained tens of micrograms in weight from surface contamination, according
to a new study.

As a result, each country that has one of these standard masses has a slightly
different definition of the kilogram, which could throw off science experiments
that require very precise weight measurements or international trade in highly
restricted items that are restricted by weight, such as radioactive materials.

From the Stuff That Makes You Go Hmmm Once You Find Out About It File —
there are about 40 of these platinum-iridium cylinders, which were created in
1875, and distributed to countries who signed on to the Convention of the Meter.
The problem is, over time the cylinders became slightly different due to
disparities in how they're handled and cleaned.

To clean them, a skilled technician will rub the cylinders with chamois leather
dipped in alcohol. But because every country cleans their kilograms differently
and at different times, each kilogram in the world is off by a different,
unknown amount.

To solve the cleaning problem scientists developed a nifty new gadget
that uses ozone and ultraviolet light to really get those cylinders shiny
and bright. It also has the added bonus of providing a uniform cleaning
procedure, so the fundamental unit of mass could soon be more consistent.

Long-term though the world needs to get away from defining the kilogram
based on what is essentially a glorified beer can. What happens if the
cleaning guy drops it? You can't really order a new one from Amazon...

One possibility is to use a fundamental law of nature instead. A precision
electromagnetic device could be created to produce a uniform amount of force,
from which mass can then be calculated. Of course adopting such a procedure
will entail years of international negotiations so we're pretty much stuck
for now.

So… The next time your scale says you've packed on a few pounds, you
can probably get away with blaming it on "inconsistencies" in the international
definition of a kilogram. I mean, if Real Scientists say they aren't sure, how
can that el-cheapo bathroom scale possibly be right!